


When Trouble Comes

by Destina



Category: Die Hard (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Yuletide Treat, post-movie: Live Free or Die Hard, supportive snarky co-workers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21945361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: John's path intersects with trouble on holidays, weekends, and workdays ending in y - and Matt's still coming to terms with it.
Relationships: Matt Farrell/John McClane
Comments: 33
Kudos: 268
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	When Trouble Comes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunsetmog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmog/gifts).



"Groundhog Day," Matt said. "Groundhog Day was the worst."

"You'll have to elaborate a bit on that," Tom said, as he chewed on the last of Marcy's coffee cake and raced to finish a bit of code. 

"Skyscrapers," Matt said. He sighed and brought up a new window. "Fire."

"Towering Inferno kind of fire?"

"No, trash can bomb on the 44th floor." John had smelled oddly of smoked salami ever since. "And then terrorists. Sort of. Not really. They gave up as soon as they saw him."

"Wouldn't you?" Tom paused in his coding and glanced sideways at Matt. 

"No! I mean, I do now on a regular basis, but that's different." Matt ignored Tom's knowing grin. He'd been working side by side with Tom at this little start-up for six months now; there wasn't much Tom didn't understand about the McClane-Farrell sideshow. "That's...voluntary."

"He doesn't really look like he could kick ass on a major scale," Tom said. 

"Hey! That's...actually partly true, I'll give you that. But he is kind of intimidating."

"Not kind of. He's intimidating. Remember that time he showed up downstairs and the guard wouldn't let him in? Pretty sure there's still a stain on that chair." 

Matt ducked his head to hide his grin. 

Maybe it had been inevitable, the two of them getting together. Matt could still remember limping down the hospital corridor to John's bedside. The smell of antiseptic and the terror on Lucy's face; pulling up a chair by John's bed and resting his forehead on the edge of the mattress. 

He remembered waking to John's gentle touch - fingers buried deep in Matt's hair, stroking slowly - and knowing he never wanted it to end. 

The problem was, he was starting to have some sympathy for why Holly might have left John. It was an unpleasant, squirmy feeling, and he did his best to ignore it, but there it was. 

A calendar lurked in Matt's desk drawer, and the number of dates with red circles around them was growing. 

#

"It's not even Office Professionals Day for months yet," Matt moaned. He stared at his phone, where John's text said IM FINE MAT DON'T COM HME, which of course had led him immediately to Google and the top story on the Post's website: NYPD's Finest Thwart Robbery. "It was just a retirement luncheon. Why."

"Oh, dear," Madelyn said, clucking her tongue. The others gave sympathetic nods, and sat forward in their chairs. Tom just kept coding. 

"I mean, who thinks robbing a diner cops frequent is a good idea?" Matt looked around the room, reassured by the scowls on every face. "Did they think he was just going to - just going to sit there, finishing his banana cream pie?"

"Some people have no sense," agreed George. 

Matt already knew he was going to be ruined for bananas forever. "You know, some stains just don't come out."

"Tell me about it," Dolores said. Matt reached over and clasped her hand. 

"I don't know how much longer I can..." Matt stopped himself. That was unproductive thinking, especially with John snoring away at home in bed, expecting coffee and sandwiches when he finally extricated himself from the blankets. 

The terrifying thing was, even the most truncated texts from John were welcome, because if he could type, he was alive and conscious. But Matt was starting to flinch every time his cell buzzed in his pocket. 

#

The whole office staff was hovering near the elevators, waiting for Matt when he arrived for work the day after Earth Day. 

"Eco-terrorists," Matt said mournfully. They ushered him off to the snack table and filled a plate for him in solidarity. 

He stuffed a green-frosted mini-cupcake into his mouth. Dolores had made three dozen. Probably not enough. "I don't understand how bombs protect the environment. Pollution! Debris!" Some of that debris had hit John, who had thrown himself in front of Matt, and then John had hit multiple terrorists in return. Seemed fair. 

"We know John's all right - I saw him on the 11pm news -- but how are you, honey?" Dolores surreptitiously pushed the Tupperware container of cupcakes closer. 

"John is absolutely not all right. His bruises have bruises. Did you know that was a thing? Multiple contusions." Matt sat back in his chair. "His scars are starting to have scars." 

"In his defense, it does seem like a ski weekend would have been a nice break for you both." Marcy looked up from her screen and added, "The timing was just bad."

"The timing is always bad. Like a clock with a stuck second hand." There had always been a little furrow between Matt's eyebrows. When he'd met John, it was a faint line; now it was becoming a crater, and he saw it every morning in the mirror. "I didn't even get both my rented ski boots on." 

"Well, that is tragic. Are you going to eat those?" Tom reached for the cupcakes and managed to get one before Dolores slapped his hand away. 

A typical day in the office; they all went back to work, and left Matt with his half-told war story and his sympathy cupcakes, and a restless urge for a ski vacation do-over. He was starting to realize he wasn't going to get those kinds of opportunities; things in his life happened fast, and then all that was left was to kiss John in relief and joy and go to work to debrief about it. There were worse things. 

At least it hadn't been a cyberattack.

He ate two more cupcakes and took three back to his desk, because trauma. 

#

Holly called Matt's cell the week before Christmas - ostensibly to remind them about John's share of payments to Lucy's grad school. Matt had his suspicions, though; the week before Christmas was when the whole thing started. The hero thing. That thing John couldn't control, or turn off. 

Maybe Holly just wanted to know John was safe. Matt couldn't blame her. Divorce wouldn't really cure that kind of concern, not for people married as long as they had been.

"I'm really sorry Holly, he's still at work. I could take a message?" Matt scrounged around on the kitchen counter for a pen, and came up with a dry erase marker and a postcard from the dentist for notepaper. Good enough. 

"I tried his cell, but he didn't answer. I just thought..." She paused, and Matt knew exactly what she thought, because he thought it at least ten times a week - every time John was slow to answer a text, every time he didn't answer the phone by the fourth ring or it went to voicemail. 

"He's okay," Matt said, pausing with the phone pressed between his ear and shoulder, the pen forgotten. "I talked to him this morning on his break." 

Holly exhaled slowly, and Matt sat down on the bar stool, because suddenly his knees were weak, and his leg was aching where the gunshot wound had healed long ago, and he wanted to ask her a million questions, but there didn't seem to be any way to start that conversation. 

"You two doing anything special for Christmas?" Holly asked. 

Matt swallowed, and waited for his equilibrium to return, and then he said, "Since neither of his kids are coming out, I think we decided to stay home and reheat some ham or something."

"Home is good," Holly said, and then, "Savor all those moments, Matt."

"I will," Matt said. "I do, really, I...I get it."

"Yes, you do," Holly said softly, with a hint of a smile in her voice. "He's worth sticking it out for, Matt. What went wrong for us wasn't about his hero complex."

Matt nodded, and processed that, and said, "But did you ever just...avoid the holidays?"

"Maybe Valentine's Day," Holly said. "John was more afraid of romance than he was terrorists." 

Matt laughed, and just like that, the tension was broken. "Thanks, Holly." 

"Anytime. Or, maybe not any time...it would be a little strange. But you know what I mean." 

"I do." 

Matt hung up and then stuck a note on the fridge, between the Empire State Building and Bonner's Pizza magnets: _Holly says to pay Lucy's tuition, you deadbeat_. 

He coded that night until he fell asleep at the desk, and woke up to hot coffee at his elbow and a blanket over his shoulders. He gulped down the coffee, shrugged off the blanket and went to find John, because suddenly all he wanted was curl up beside him and sleep, before Christmas descended on them with all its possibilities of mayhem. 

#

As it turned out, Valentine's Day wasn't an issue; John was very busy being held hostage. Which turned out okay for John, and not very okay for the gunman, though the five bodega customers he saved were very grateful. 

Matt sat in their darkened living room alone eating Chinese take-out, and thinking about the balance of opposite things in the universe - terror and elation, love and despair, John McClane and death. Some of those extremes seemed closer together on the spectrum than others, and the distance narrowed every day. 

John texted him a few times during the evening to let Matt know he was alive. Matt didn't answer him, because John knew he was reading them regardless. He was glad John was ok. Beyond that, there didn't seem to be much to say, and Matt was so tired. 

ALL OK MATT, said the text he received at 12:02AM - when the holiday was officially over. And he was fine, Matt knew he was, but that didn't stop him from shuddering with relief. YOU OK?

He didn't answer right away. This would be another circle on the calendar; Matt was running out of empty days. The thing was -- Matt knew who John was, intimately so, when they decided to be together, but he hadn't quite understood what it would mean for who Matt was, down deep underneath. The ways it might change him. 

Sometimes he wondered if he was adult enough to handle the sheer volume of maturity required of him in their relationship. Sometimes he was terrified that the answer was no. 

_Be careful_ , he texted back eventually - though there was no need to say it with the danger past, and because John wouldn't be careful because he wasn't capable of being careful, and yet he would try to be because he wanted to come home to Matt, because - 

\-- because Matt meant something to him, he knew he did. But not enough for him not to run straight into danger. He'd always be that guy. Matt wanted to be with that guy, he did. It was just...harder than he'd imagined it would be, to care so much and have so little control over what might happen next. 

_I'm ok_ , he texted, and because he could sense John's worry through the atmosphere, _I'm good._ And it was true; he could make it true. 

#

"I didn't get to pinch you yesterday," Madelyn said to Matt, on the day after St. Patrick's Day. "But I know you weren't wearing green, so I owe you one today!" She hesitated, her hand hovering over his arm. "Is there...anyplace I shouldn't pinch you?"

"Nope! No hidden injuries. All good. It was a quiet day," Matt said, grinning at her. "No bombs, no terrorists. Nothing more dangerous than a batch of green beer at the pub and John singing really bad karaoke - honestly, how can one man screw up the words to Danny Boy that badly? There is not one Irish bone in that guy's body."

"Maybe he broke his Irish bone and it didn't heal right," Tom said, without breaking stride on his coding. "According to you he's broken basically everything else."

"True." 

"McClane is a Scottish name," Dolores said, rolling her eyes. 

Just then, Matt's phone vibrated in his pocket. He clapped a hand over it instinctively, and squeezed his eyes shut briefly as he pulled it out. 

Another day, another emergency. Another late night. Regular business. He could deal. 

WHAT PICK UP, the text read. 

Matt grinned at his phone. _Milk, syrup, hot dogs, gauze_

WHOS HURT

 _Funny._ He paused. _Early night?_

The phone rang, startling him, and he nearly dropped it. While his fellow programmers laughed, he shook his head and answered it. "You calling to tell me you're going to meet me at the door in your birthday suit?"

"Well, if I wasn't, I am now," John drawled. For once, there were no sirens behind John, no shouting or gunshots. Nothing to indicate imminent danger or threat of death. It was nice to talk to John and not feel his blood pressure rising. "You sitting there with all the nerds?"

"Maybe."

"Do they know how good I look in my birthday suit?"

"That is none of their business." Matt ducked his head down and said in a rush, "I love you and you better be there when I get home."

"Yes sir," John said softly. "It'll be my pleasure to peel those jeans off you when you get here." 

Matt hung up still grinning, and turned to see all his co-workers grinning at him in return. 

"So," Dolores said, "leaving early today?" 

#

Later, Matt would reflect that he really had no idea how many arcane and obscure holidays fell between March and July, until John was tied up (literally or figuratively) on several of them.

#

On the Fourth of July, Matt refused to get out of bed. 

He could have claimed it was strategic - judging by the way John stripped him out his shorts and T-shirt and went down on him slowly, thoroughly, until Matt was shaking and spent - but it was more a survival mechanism. 

Matt loved John's hands on him, the way he took his time with Matt's body, like he was completely sure of every touch, and not still learning all the ways he could make Matt crazy. Sometimes he'd look at John and find he wasn't able to remember how it had been before they were together. It had only been two years, and he couldn't imagine being without this again. 

It dawned on him slowly, as he kissed John to his heart's content in their bedroom, that he'd never seriously considered leaving. Not even when it hurt more to stay. It was the fear that he wouldn't get to make the choice - that it would be taken away from him, because John was who he was, and had to do what he did - that underpinned all his dread. Not that it made staying easier, but it made the choice to do so all the more important. 

"We could take in the fireworks," John said, looking down at Matt with those sexy, sleepy eyes. "Grab a hot dog. Hit a ballgame."

"No," Matt said, and it came out a little too forcefully. A little too much like he was adamant about it. Which he was. He meant to be reasonable and partner-like and accommodating to whatever made John happy, but the idea of being out there on the 4th was a little too much for him. 

"All right," John said. He sat back in the bed and scrutinized Matt's expression before saying, "You know, nothing's going to happen." 

"Are you kidding me right now? You're kidding me. It's the Fourth of July. This our anniversary. This is the day I found out what a shit-magnet you are. How you and holidays are a toxic pair of life-threatening magnets, like rabid Scotty dogs."

"This is also the day right before you saved my life and my kid's life," John said softly. "Besides, that was two years ago, and last year, it was quiet. It's guaranteed that nothing will happen this year, either."

"You can't guarantee me that." Matt slunk down in the bed and pulled the quilt over his head. 

"I guess if you wanted guarantees, you picked the wrong old man to move in with." John burrowed under the blanket and got his hands on Matt's hips, pulling him down the bed and pressing their bodies together. Matt was already hard again, aching with wanting John. 

"I don't want that," Matt said. He rested his hands on the small of John's back. "I have what I want here. But can we just have this day for ourselves?" 

"Sure," John said. He looked way too thoughtful when he kissed Matt's nose. "You know, I used to tell Holly I was going to live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. I think I missed the chance for all three."

"What exactly is your point with that?" Matt buried his face in John's neck, because he was not having any of the corpse talk when they were naked together. It made him feel too raw. Too vulnerable, like John could see his heart. 

"Lot of mileage, but got to keep traveling." John slid his arms around Matt and held him. "You okay with that?"

Matt was quiet for a long time, just breathing in the scent of John's skin, being with him. This time was theirs; it would always be about having time that was theirs, no matter what was ahead on the calendar. "Yeah," he said finally. "I mean...yeah. I'm okay with it."

"We can carve out more days just for us." John already was opening him up, slow, sweet touches, but he'd flayed Matt apart more deeply with his words and care than he ever would with the (excellent) sex.

"Good plan," Matt breathed, and then John was inside him, and all the worries faded away, for a while. 

#

"How was your fourth?" Madelyn asked him on Monday, as she gnawed on a leftover piece of beef jerky. Matt could see everyone's hands still on their keyboards, their heads tilted to the side, waiting to hear if there had been adventures. If John was okay - and if Matt was. They were his friends, as weird as they all were, with their neon-frosted cupcakes and their sarcasm and their incessant questions, and he loved that they cared. 

"Quiet and full of sex," he said honestly. Tom made a disgusted noise and slapped a pair of headphones on over his ears. 

"Don't mind him," Dolores said, rolling her chair closer. "Fill me in!"

"That's what he said," George said, and while they all groaned in unison, Matt reached into his desk drawer and grabbed the red-circle calendar to toss it in the trash. 

No sense counting what was lost, when he could be enjoying what he'd found.

**Author's Note:**

> A treat for sunsetmog, with a little bit of angst and relationship negotiation, plus a happy ending.


End file.
